ABSTRACT
Any inquiry into laissez faire ideologies must begin with the great Scottish political economist Adam Smith (1723–90). His masterwork, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), postulated that national prosperity was to be achieved and secured by permitting the free play of market forces to determine an objective price. The primacy of the market ensures that profitable investment takes place in areas where demand is sufficiently strong. Thus the individual pursuit of men’s self-interest, rationalized and harmonized by the market, ensures the continued prosperity of the community at large. Smith’s exhortations to government to abandon the numerous restrictions and tolls on commerce and industry were vigorously if selectively adopted by generations of political leaders from Pitt the Younger to Gladstone. Smith by no means envisaged stripping government of all responsibilities, however. It was essential for government to provide basic services which individuals were unwilling or unable to offer to the market. This might extend even to State education (ia). Smith’s writings on the economy enormously influenced Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and the school of utilitarian philosophers, who sought to ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Most, like J. R. McCulloch (1789–1864), accepted that the government’s duty was to promote free trade in order to guarantee profitable investment, thus ensuring full employment and decent wages. Though he scorned the utility of working men combining to adjust wages, he conceded that in times of crisis they must be offered more help than would be available from the market. Laissez-faire and self-help were the norm, but were not applicable in all circumstances (ib). Nassau Senior (1790–1864), a Benthamite thinker and an influential political figure on poor law and factory questions, was likewise guarded on the subject of government responsibility. Although self-reliance was a safe general guide, there were occasions on which government intervention was absolutely necessary (ic). John Stuart Mill (1806–73), educated in rigorously utilitarian fashion by his father James Mill, accepted laissez-faire precepts almost as a matter of course, though with similar caveats to those expressed by Senior. Towards the end of his life, however, he came to the radically different view that man’s liberty to pursue his own self-interest is closely circumscribed by his environment (id). Thus, he looked away from the Benthamites and anticipated, among others, the Fabian socialists.
